He Signed The Divorce And Now He Wants Me Back

How Tables Turn

Mia's POV

Hello, Paris

I stood outside the airport with one suitcase and my hand on my stomach with also nowhere to go except the address Aunt Wei had written on a folded piece of paper in my coat pocket.

It was an old friend of hers owned a small apartment not far from the city center and had agreed to let me stay until I figured things out.

The check from Chairman Zhao sat in my bag untouched for almost two weeks after I arrived. Every time I looked at it I felt sick.

Then the first medical bill arrived, then the second and when I had opened my wallet one morning to buy groceries and counted what was left, the math was very simple and very brutal.

I deposited the money that night and I sat on the bathroom floor afterward and cried. I hated that I now needed the money but what choice do I have?

"You okay in there?" Nora's voice came through my phone speaker from the counter where I had left it.

"I'm fine," I said.

"Mia..." She called out, frustrated

"I deposited it." I said alas

She was quiet for a second, then said,

"Good. Now stop crying about it and eat something." She added and I let out a laugh I haven't had in weeks.

The first trimester was the hardest thing I had ever done. I was sick every morning, sometimes into the afternoon, and I was doing job interviews in between, taking the metro across the city in the rain, sitting in waiting rooms trying not to throw up while some HR person looked at my CV and then looked at my stomach

I got rejected so many times that I stopped counting.

I started freelancing eventually. I started doing small fashion sketches for independent boutiques online and that paid just enough to cover one bill if I was lucky.

Then Leo came one day when I was doing laundry.

After hours of labour that wasn't progressing, the doctors moved quickly and the next thing I properly remember is waking up in recovery with a scar across my stomach and a nurse placing a very small and very loud baby on my chest.

I looked at his face and I completely fell apart.

He had dark eyes and a jaw that was not mine. What a betrayal! Even the baby had his father's face. I held him anyway and cried, he's mine. This cute baby really is mine.

The weeks after were hard. I was healing from surgery, learning to feed him and also learning to read what each cry meant.

I was doing all of it alone in a small apartment at three in the morning with nobody to hand him to when I was too exhausted to think straight. There were nights I sat in the dark feeding him and cried so quietly, but Leo was very patient with me for someone so small.

He gripped my finger while he slept and I watched him breathe and I thought, okay, get up tomorrow, and I did.

I got up every day, because of that little one.

As he got older I started developing the idea that had been sitting in the back of my head since my freelance days.

I sketched at night after Leo went to sleep, filled notebooks with ideas, researched manufacturers, taught myself things I had no business learning at that stage of my life.

"You haven't slept again," Aunt Wei said one evening through the phone, and I could hear her disapproval clearly from across several time zones.

"I slept," I said.

"Two hours is not sleeping, Mia." She compinwed.

"Leo slept well though," I said, and she just fine.

The first real launch failed and the second one barely broke even. There was a period in the third year where I sat with my accountant and she laid out the numbers.

I looked at them and thought seriously about stopping, finding a regular job and letting the idea go but then I woke up one morning to forty-seven missed calls.

A major influencer had worn one of my pieces to a Paris Fashion Week event the night before and posted it and by the time I saw the notification my website had already crashed from the traffic.

I sat on the kitchen floor in my pyjamas and stared at my phone while Leo ate breakfast beside me, completely unbothered.

"Mommy is on the floor," he said.

"I know," I said.

"Why?" He asked innocently.

"Good news," I told him.

He thought about this and went back to his cereal.

That was the beginning of Lumière group. I started with me on the floor of my kitchen, a crashed website and a four year old who wanted more milk.

The years that followed were not easy but also the happiest I've been. Even through the failed investor meetings, partnerships that fell apart, nights I spent going over contracts with a lawyer I paid in installments.

But Lumière grew and I grew with it.

Whenever Leo asked about his father, I told him he was someone I used to know, and Leo would nod seriously like that made complete sense and move on, because he was that kind of child.

When the invitation came from Shanghai for the collaboration summit, I read it twice and put it face down on my desk.

"We're not going," I told James, my business partner, the next morning.

"Mia, this deal would take Lumière into a completely different tier," he said slowly,

"I know what it would do," I said, "I'm not going back to Shanghai."

He didn't push and just left the folder on my desk before he alked out.

I ignored it for four days but then one night I stood in Leo's doorway and watched him sleeping and thought about everything I had built, the ones I still wanted to build and what I wanted him to see when he looked at his mother.

I booked the flight the next morning and went to Shanghai together with my business partner, some of my team members, my son and my personal assistant.

I had a car arranged but I arrived earlier than expected and sent the driver ahead with the luggage while I walked the last stretch to the hotel because I needed a moment before I had to be CEO Mia Shen in front of anyone.

I was turning a corner near the hotel entrance with coffee in hand, reading something on my phone and not paying attention when I walked directly into someone coming from the other direction.

The coffee went everywhere, and I grabbed the nearest thing which turned out to be his arm. I tried to say sorry but the words stopped. It was Ethan Zhao

I immediately straightened up, looked down at the coffee on his coat, looked back up and said,

"Sorry about that," in a voice that came out completely steady, which honestly surprised me.

Then I walked into the hotel without looking back.